In 1909 the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's Founding Manifesto of Futurism was published on the front page of Le Figaro. Between 1909 and 1912 the Futurists published over thirty manifestos, celebrating speed and danger, glorifying war and technology, and advocating political and artistic revolution. This collection of essays aims to reassess the activities of the Italian Futurist movement from an international and interdisciplinary perspective, focusing on its activities and legacies in the field of poetry, painting, sculpture, theatre, cinema, advertising and politics.

The essays offer exciting new readings in gender politics, aesthetics, historiography, intermediality and interdisciplinarity. They explore the works of major players of the movement as well as its lesser-known figures, and the often critical impact of Futurism on contemporary or later avant-garde movements such as Cubism, Dada and Vorticism.

Introduction: Elza Adamowicz and Simona Storchi
1. Engaging the crowd: the Futurist manifesto as avant-garde advertisement - Matthew D. McLendon
2. Heroes/heroines of Futurist culture: oltreuomo/oltredonna - Jennifer Griffiths
3. 'Out of touch': F. T. Marinetti's Il tattilismo and the Futurist critique of separation - Pierpaolo Antonello
4. La bomba-romanzo esplosivo, or Dada's burning heart - Dafydd Jones
5. Futurist canons and the development of avant-garde historiography (Futurism - Expressionism - Dada) Maria Elena Versari
6. 'An infinity of living forms, representative of the absolute'?: reading Futurism with Pierre Albert-Birot as witness, creative collaborator, dissenter - Debra Kelly
7. The dispute over simultaneity: Boccioni - Delaunay, interpretational error or Bergsonian practice? Delphine Bière
8. Fernand Léger's La Noce: the bride stripped bare? Elza Adamowicz,
9. Nocturnal itineraries: occultism and the metamorphic self in Florentine Futurism - Paola Sica
10. 'A hysterical hullo-bulloo about motor cars': the Vorticist critique of Futurism, 1914-19 Jonathan Black
11. Futurist performance, 1910-16 - Günter Berghaus
12. Le Roi Bombance: the original Futurist cookbook? - Selena Daly
13. The cult of the 'expressive' in Italian Futurist poetry: new challenges to reading - John J. White
14. Visual approaches to Futurist aeropoetry - Willard Bohn
15. The Untamables: language and politics in Gramsci and Marinetti - Sascha Bru
16. The dark side of Futurism: Marinetti and war - Marja Härmänmaa
17. Rethinking interdisciplinarity: Futurist cinema as metamedium - Carolina Fernández Castrillo
18. A very beautiful day after tomorrow: Luca Buvoli and the legacy of Futurism - Elisa Sai
Index

Editors

Elza Adamowicz is Professor of French Literature and Visual Culture at Queen Mary University of London

Simona Storchi is Lecturer in Italian at the University of Leicester